A difficult war

I’m referring to another war, not the one against terrorism, that the nation has been waging for decades. This is the war against drug trafficking, where demand is great, profits even greater, and where there are few complainants.

In my younger years they talked of Quiricada in sly whispers or with a knowing grin, though it was not the only street in the city of Manila where one could get a pharmacological cornucopia. I surmised that "Quiricada" came to refer to neighboring streets as well in the district of Sta. Cruz, where long-haired boys and girls in micro minis or hot pants stood or squatted on street corners, eyelids droopy, smelling of sweet burned weed.

Martial law ended the days of long hair and brought down hemlines, but the kids were still there in Sta. Cruz, lost in their drug-induced worlds. In a shanty on a narrow alley they dumped piles of first-grade marijuana, seeds included, for rolling and distribution in the streets. There were similar gathering places in Cubao and Manila’s University Belt.

They were experts in writing out fake prescriptions, those young pushers/users. They had "yellow" prescriptions for everything, including "hard" drugs such as morphine. They had pills for everything, to get high, feel low, speed up, go slow, escape into another world. When the martial law regime cracked down on the distribution of the pills, they switched to cough syrups.

I met some of them and they never forced their stuff on anyone, especially adolescents. They were mostly nice kids, peaceniks who strummed guitars and liked Neil Young and Simon and Garfunkel. Others wallowed in the angst unique to that age when hormones are running amuck.

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These days I’ve been told that marijuana is considered passé — a medicine, even, for the aged. Already some countries are considering the limited legalization of marijuana use. The drugs of choice these days are Ecstasy and shabu. For each generation, a drug. There is, it seems, always a demand for mind-altering substances — for thrills, to cure boredom, to forget heartaches, or simply to belong.

This continuing demand for banned drugs is one of the biggest problems in the campaign against drug trafficking. We can discourage drug abuse by trotting out all the murderers and rapists who have admitted that they committed their crime while under the influence of drugs. Yet there are enough people who know that even nice kids can be drawn to drugs, or who know chronic drug abusers who do harm only to themselves. If a drug becomes unavailable, they will find other substances. Consider those young children sniffing rugby for the cheapest high. It’s a social problem and law enforcement is just one of the solutions.

Since there is a continuing demand, there is a continuing supply. Where there’s a demand for anything prohibited, there’s big money to be made. And if it’s prohibited, you can be sure there’s some law enforcer involved in the illegal trade.

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We can discourage this by coming down hard on any cop or soldier caught engaging directly or profiting indirectly from the drug trade. The revelations of Mary "Rosebud" Ong on the drug trade, whether or not rehashed as Sen. Panfilo Lacson said, must be pursued.

For several days events in the United States relegated Ong and the accompanying cast of shady characters to the inside pages of local newspapers. As soon as the Senate resumed its session, however, Ong was back in the news, with allegations against Chief Superintendent Reynaldo Acop that he could not deny, probably because of her nasty habit of keeping documents and records of all her transactions.

Yu Yuk Lai, a woman who was coddled by the now defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (according to Ong), has been sentenced to life for drug trafficking. Will we soon see law enforcers behind bars as well? That will send a strong message to traffickers that the country means business in the war against drugs. But first Ong and her handlers will have to file their charges in court.

When the guilty are locked up in prison, however, will there be others who will take their place? There’s a big demand for drugs, remember, and no one is sure how to deal with that end of the problem.

It’s like trying to "smoke out" terrorists from the desolate hills of Afghanistan. Victory seems unlikely, but those waging the war have to keep trying.